(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to crowd surveillance and, more specifically, to an automated crowd surveillance system that mitigates information overload by producing metrics related to the underlying crowd sociology.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Prior art crowd surveillance uses several monitor banks and human monitors to switch video feed to camera sites, which are too numerous to display at one time. With hundreds or thousands of displays available, command centers cannot effectively discriminate between benign, dangerous, and anomalous crowd situations. Automated pedestrian and vehicle detection systems simply produce a sequence of maps of the detected pedestrians and vehicles at particular time frames.
The prior art does not show the features of the present invention, which reduces the megapixel images in video frames to a few variables relevant to the state of the crowd, and automatically directs operators to the particular cameras which may be of interest from the numerous available camera feeds available. Accordingly, those of skill in the art will appreciate the present invention, which addresses the above discussed problems.